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Nerve.com - Austin City Limits
There were several women on the farm who had learned how to determine if another woman was ovulating by examining her vagina with a speculum. Something about its appearance was a sure-fire indicator of ovulation; Raz wasn't sure what.
"I'm not ovulating right now, though," she told me. "I know that."
If a couple announced they wanted to have a date, and that was approved, a spec-check would be performed to see if there was any risk of pregnancy. The creation of some of the tribe's children had been arranged this way as well.
Although I'd expected the place to be full of psychedelic drugs and alcohol, there really wasn't so much of that going around. Pot was pretty abundant, but it was surprisingly weak, and the Zendiks smoked it casually, like tobacco. I assumed they grew it themselves. They made their own beer too, and this was very strong, but not so ubiquitous.
It had gotten very late, and after the performance I found myself staring into a campfire with a drunken Xed and a few other stragglers. Raz had indicated that I could sleep in her bunkroom, and I wondered then if I was being given a pass on the quarantine rule. At some point in the evening she'd decided to dance and was now covered in copious amounts of sweat.
I pictured a memorable, but not entirely enjoyable, coupling between us.
In fact, Raz had not been offering me sex that night. The bunkrooms were strictly for sleeping. I fell asleep by myself on a dusty mattress, which I learned later was reserved for the dogs.
The Zendiks rose at dawn for chores. I wandered about in a haze, helping to feed animals and wondering what had become of Heather. Our original plan had been to just stay for dinner, and then I'd give her a ride back.
Heather showed up at breakfast, looking sleepy and holding the hand of Birch.
"I'm going to stay here," she told me.
"What about your stuff?" I asked.
"I'll get that later. It's unimportant."
After breakfast, I went to say goodbye to a hung-over Xed, who had been
It was a word I heard a lot while I was there: "bullshit." |
assigned to watch the children for the morning. He was being helped by a woman named Liv, who said she dropped out of a Master's program at Cornell to come down here.
"I was just tired of all the bullshit, you know?" she explained.
It was a word I heard a lot while I was there: "bullshit." As I drove away, followed by barking dogs and a group of giggling, naked little kids, I wondered if there wasn't something to all that rejection of the outside world. As I left rural Bastrop and entered the bustling city of Austin I passed by gas stations and twenty-four-hour stores, massive billboards, and strip malls, and yes, I suppose it was all a bunch of bullshit.
But pretty Heather was out wrapping hair on the Drag just a few weeks later. She told me Xed had also left The Zendiks, and so had Liv, who grew tired of the bullshit on the farm too, I guess. Eventually, the Zendiks moved away from Texas and down to Florida, for Wulf's health apparently, and then up to North Carolina, where Wulf died, and they got sick of all the golf courses and fancy neighbors moving in. So they relocated again, to West Virginia, where they currently reside. Arol still runs the show, and her daughter Fawn, is apparently poised to take things over.
The Zendiks have a new business now too, selling T-shirts on the streets of Washington D.C. emblazoned with their copyrighted slogan, "Stop Bitching and Start a Revolution." Apparently business has been quite brisk ever since the pop singer Christina Aguilera wore one on national television.
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| ABOUT THE AUTHOR: |
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Arthur Bradford's first book, Dogwalker, was published by Knopf in 2001, and in Vintage paperback in 2002. He is also the director of "How's Your News?", a documentary film series featuring news reporters
with mental disabilities that has appeared on HBO, Cinemax, PBS and Trio (howsyournews.com). |
©2007 Arthur Bradford and Nerve.com |
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